Mr. Niall Cody:

Absolutely. I would like to start with fuel laundering, which has been a massive problem. We are involved in significant activity in regard to fuel laundering. Since 2011 we have been involved in a major, linked strategy to tackle fuel fraud. We have closed down 134 filling stations, revoked licences and introduced new electronic record returns for oil trading. This significant development has been introduced with the support of the legitimate trade and everybody dealing in mineral oil must send in a monthly electronic return of their supply. What we are trying to do is to build up a supply chain view. What happens with marked diesel is that it eventually gets diverted and laundered and sold back as clean diesel and that is the challenge we must address. We have been trying to identify where suspicious quantities end up and to follow through on that. In the Finance Act, the Minister introduced a provision on reckless trading. Therefore, if a legitimate distributor sells what is clearly a load that does not make sense, we will tell him he should not be trading unless he has X, Y or Z and we can go to him, carry out an assessment and hit him.

The latest development is the new marker we have introduced, in conjunction with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. From 1 April, there is a new marker on both sides of the Border in addition to the marker already used, which was red in the North and green here. We now have a new marker in addition to the colour marker. We have done a fair degree of testing of diesel since April and of 277 diesel samples we took, we have the results of 78 of them back from the State Laboratory and of that 78, some 23 have tested positive for the new marker. In July we will have roadside analysers in place. On both sides of the Border, we have commissioned new testers who can do roadside testing and these will be in place by the end of this month. This will facilitate detection. Currently, we must send samples to the State Laboratory and that process takes time. The State Laboratory is a significant partner in this new process.

In the past year, we have carried out a study of the impact on the diesel market of laundering. This study was carried out by economists in Revenue and is based on the size of the legitimate market. Indications are that the work over the past few years has led to an increase in the yield from the legitimate trade of in the region of €200 million. It is very hard to say this is a result of what we have done, because there are various factors involved. However, we feel we have made a serious dent in the business of oil laundering, but we are not naive enough to think that this is the end of it, because people involved in fuel laundering and its distribution are very organised, determined and ruthless. We have certainly seen a difference in regard to people who would accept an occasional load over the years and sell it mixed up with legitimate fuel. These people have probably shied away from that.

However, there are forecourts around the country and pop-up stations that are fronts for the organised gangs involved in fuel laundering. Even where we think they are doing it, we must detect it and then go through the process of revocation of licences. Sometimes in parliamentary questions we deal with for the Department, we are asked why we did not close X, Y or Z if we had evidence there was once marked fuel sold. However, people use the cover of limited liability and people set up different companies. If we revoked licences, we would be subject to judicial review and in certain cases, the immediate response we would get would be a legal letter. It is a serious matter to revoke somebody's licence to trade.

We feel we are having a significant impact on the illicit fuel market. The difficulty is that it is an all-island issue. If we succeed in stopping any laundering south of the Border, and if it continues north of the Border, we will not know visually whether the laundered fuel was red or green laundered, although we will know from testing. That is the reason for the new fuel marker. The UK authorities are interested in our electronic monthly system, because they have a paper based system, which is about as useful as the paper it is on - it sits in a file and the risk analysis cannot be carried out.